[Portrait of M. A. Usov]

M. Usov

Academician M. A. Usov

(1883–1939)

On July 26, from a severe attack of angina pectoris, at the Belokurikha resort, full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Professor Mikhail Antonovich Usov, suddenly died.

Only a month before, full of strength and creative energy, he had taken an active part in the work of the conference on the study and development of the productive forces of Siberia. And it could not then have occurred to anyone that this great heart would soon cease to beat.

Who was Mikhail Antonovich to us; whom have we lost in him?

He was an enthusiast of the Soviet higher school, a bold innovator in science—of the new Soviet geological science—and, along with this, a major public figure.

In him we have lost an energetic reformer of higher education, as exemplified by the Tomsk Industrial Institute named after S. M. Kirov; a foremost pedagogue and rare teacher, to whom not only young people but also old scholars and production workers came to learn; a remarkable educator of hundreds of scientists and thousands of geologists engaged in practical work.

In the person of Mikhail Antonovich there has departed from us forever a world Soviet scientist, who devoted himself wholly to the service of socialist construction, and who provided experience in the restructuring of geological science on the basis of Marxist-Leninist methodology.

There has departed an active builder of the second Donbass and of the second metallurgical base of the USSR in the East; an organizer of major scientific-research institutes in Siberia; the creator of Usov’s school of geologists, of the new geology and geotectonics of Kuzbass, as well as of the new geology of Western Siberia; the author of the geotectonic theory of the self-development of the earth’s matter and of more than one hundred other classic works on applied and theoretical geology.

In the person of Mikhail Antonovich we have also lost a major public figure, who always knew how to combine scientific-pedagogical and production activity with the great public work that he carried on for many years in the Tomsk City Soviet, the Regional Executive Committee, in the mines and pits of Kuzbass, in the daily Siberian and Central press, etc.

We have lost in him a true man of the great Stalinist epoch, who created a new socialist industry and a new socialist science, who saw in this creative work the task of his life and found true joy in life only in it. Mikhail Antonovich devoted his entire self to systematic, intense work, sparing neither time nor strength, and he was never so full of vitality and cheerful as at his desk, working on the solution of complex production or theoretical problems.

The loss of Mikhail Antonovich is especially grievous for Siberia, for Tomsk, where he worked continuously for 36 years, beginning as a student at the former Tomsk Technological (now Industrial) Institute, then as a postgraduate student of Academician V. A. Obruchev (in those years—a professor of the institute), and further, from 1912 through 1938, as professor and head of a number of departments of the Geological-Prospecting Faculty.

Here all his activity unfolded; here his remarkable scholarly works, which gained worldwide renown, were created; several generations of geologists of the Usov school were trained; a number of new departments were organized and, on their basis, the Geological-Prospecting Faculty was created—now one of the best in the Union—as well as Siberian scientific-research institutes: the Siberian Geological Committee and the West Siberian Trust of Rare Metals. Here the remarkable work of Mikhail Antonovich and his pupils on the geology of Kuzbass, and then of all Siberia, was developed. Finally, here too work was carried out on the study of the mineral-resource base of the Stalin Metallurgical Combine in the Kuznetsk region.

In mid-1938 the Siberian public welcomed Mikhail Antonovich’s transfer to leading work in Moscow. In the short time that elapsed after that, Mikhail Antonovich’s innovative ideas in geology found many new followers among the staffs of the central geologists, and scientific investigations in line with his ideas began to be carried out on the scale of the entire Union.

Mikhail Antonovich’s remarkable life came to an end on July 26, 1939. But the new theoretical geology developed by him in special scholarly works, as well as in a number of higher-education courses, especially in the courses in General Geology and Geotectonics, like the Usov school of geologists, will live on, and their enormous role in Soviet socialist construction and Soviet science will be preserved for a long time. Thousands of pupils trained by Mikhail Antonovich will continue the work of their teacher for the good of our Socialist motherland¹).

The Editors.

¹) In the near future the editors propose to publish a special volume of the Izvestiya dedicated to the memory of Academician M. A. Usov.